History intact in stone, in hands

Even though I studied history, I was never interested in dates, battles, kings, economics, politics. I have a terrible mind for dates and facts. Individual lives interested me, saints and their close friends, who became their biographers. Villagers who encountered the holy, and built shrines, documenting their own faiths into history. Grandmothers’ trunks reopened after Communism, the old icons and prayers intact in their hands and memories.

So many places in history are heavy with this kind of weight. What did Faulkner say about history? The past is never dead?

I remember looking at the “maps of the holy land” in the back of my mint green, Precious Moments Bible, during particularly long sermons. The maps were mostly brown and beige, with small bits of river. I couldn’t imagine those places as real.

At Harran, a city that has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years. The earliest mention of Harran in records is from 2300 BCE.

Never would I have imagined I’d go to Ephesus, and walk where Paul preached. Or see the kind of cave churches early Christians imprinted with carvings. Stone dining tables remain, as do trenches for wine, and holes in the wall where they might have hung cradles.

The faces of Christ are often rubbed off. Imagine the centuries of pilgrim hands, touching, caressing the stone, bringing prayers and desperate wishes. Imagine the Christians taking over the caves from pagans, and—first thing—carving a cross on the walls.

Inside on of the cave churches, an ancient painting of the Last Supper.

For me, the numinous wasn’t a tiger or a mighty spirit in another room, it was red paint on stone, or a damp cave, or a dark place for prayer. I entered Abraham’s cave on the women’s side, full of Muslim women and girls praying, where once Abraham spent ascetic years. I saw Job’s well, where God finally blessed him with holy water to heal his afflictions. I ran my hand over stone carvings from the earliest Christian period. I saw where pre-Christian families worked and lived.

Recreation of a traditional mud house, interior, in Harran.

Maybe nobody should try to study history until they can picture the food, the sunrise, the dust, and the fireplaces of those who lived it. I think about everything I know about Abraham—from the Bible camp song “Father Abraham,” to the promise illuminated by countless stars in the sky, to his wife laughing outside the tent—and then imagine him, and old man, praying in a cool cave. I prayed in that cave—my mind reels at the connecting point.

Inside Abraham’s cave.

This might be the biggest blessing and take-away from my trip to Turkey, that I got to be, in all tactile glory and physicality, in places of history and beauty. I should dig up my Bible, find those sterile beige maps, and recolor them. I can collage on photographs, and write in impressions.

Paintings of crosses, Christ, and saints at Cappadocia.

Next time I teach Sunday school, I won’t bring out the felt board, I’ll bring in rocks, and sand, wool, cooking ingredients, red paint, terracotta, blankets for the floor, and make a cave. We’ll pretend we’re pilgrims (and aren’t we?), with all our doubts, idiosyncrasies, needs, and desires. We’ll touch, dream, articulate, and pray—and then read about Father Abraham, Prophet Job, and letters from Ephesus. Maybe we can somehow tie knots in our strand of history back into those stories, and realize them better.

Children peeking into Job’s well.

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2 Responses

I love the images of the tactile connections to history. I remember vividly the first person who handed me a little metal cross to carry in my pocket. The idea was to reach in there and rub on that cross when I needed a connection to God. I love the idea of creating a tent and being a pilgrim. At Federated they have the Sunday school rooms painted in bright colors like a bazaar and desert town. The kids act out the Bible stories in these settings. I think it is great but also maybe it needs to change and not be the same all the time. They do have an overhang of cloth like the front of a merchant booth.